SB City Council committee to discuss housing

By NEIL HARTSTEIN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

The Santa Barbara City Council’s consideration of a proposed affordable housing fund took two different turns than expected Tuesday.

Staff had presented council members with a draft ordinance to create a Housing Opportunities, Preservation and Equity (HOPE) Fund for their review. And staff had asked for any suggestions before staff returned to council with a revised ordinance for approval.

Instead, the council voted unanimously to send the proposal

Members to work on simplifying approach to affordable housing fund

to its Ordinance Committee so its members could distill the draft ordinance down from its lengthy, complex, multi-faceted approach to a simplified approach the full council can consider and approve.

In addition, council members strongly agreed with members of the public and the Santa Barbara Housing Authority that too much emphasis was being placed on housing programs and administrative services rather than the bottom line: building more affordable housing.

Councilmember Mike Jordan, an Ordinance Committee member, put it bluntly: “We just need more units. Period. We can discuss what kinds of units later.”

Councilmember Meagan Harmon, who helped set the affordable housing trust fund in motion, said the fund was not meant to provide housing programs and administrative services.

“This fund is really about the production of housing,” she said. “That’s what’s guided my thinking from the very beginning.”

Before the council listened to a staff presentation on the ordinance followed by several speakers on the subject, they heard several residents talk about their being evicted by their landlords.

The residents said their landlords claimed they needed to make renovations, but the residents said that was just an excuse to oust them, then raise the rent for new tenants moving in.

Tuesday’s session was a repeat of last week’s council meeting when residents — many of them long-time Santa Barbarans — pleaded with the council to help them stay in their homes and not have to move out of town just to afford a place to live.

Organizers of the group vowed last week that they’d return weekly to voice their concerns.

They made good on their promise on Tuesday.